How to tweet pandemic? News narratives and seminality in COVID times
Abstract
Using a quantitative discourse analysis, this research put forward the idea of analyzing the digital narratives that traditional media use on Twitter, in the context of the first quarantine decreed in Chile because of the COVID-19. It examines the discursive strategies that the journalists display when they apply journalistic, rhetorical, connotative and digital linguistic marks, in order to collaborate with the social construction of the reality.
After this characterization, the configuration of narratives were associated with the seminality of the tweets, that is to say, with the capacity to generate or not interactive responses and comments in the users, motivating a social dialogue.
As a result, we confirm the hypothesis that the most recurrent narratives were by far the traditional journalism marks, that include the 6Ws and sources’ quotes. This could be framed and explained by the vital need for information in pandemic times. Nevertheless, we could also establish that the information in the news are not enough to incite discursive interaction, because when journalistic marks are combined with connotative resources, users’ participation notably increases.
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